Message in a bottle

The best Scandinavian crime novel of 2010

In a police station in a remote corner of Scotland, a long-forgotten bottle sits on a windowsill. There's a barely legible note inside. All that is certain is that the first word is Danish and means HELP - and that the message is written in blood.

When this strange report finally reaches the desk of Crime Commissioner Carl Morck of the Q Division, which deals with "cold cases of special importance", terrible things start to happen. Carl Morck and his colleagues - quirky Middle Eastern assistant Asad and cheeky Rose - delve into a horrific case of cults and kidnapped children whose parents never reported their disappearance. Why? Time is running out and the lives of two more children hang in the balance...

Message in a bottle won the 2010 major literary award The Glass Key for best Nordic detective novel (other winners include Jo Nesbo, Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell). This novel was also the winner of the Danish Readers' Prize 2010. Jussi Adler-Olsen's books are published in thirty-six languages. In his native Denmark alone, more than two million copies have been sold, and in Germany, for example, sales have exceeded three and a half million books.

"As in previous books, Adler-Olsen's narrative is readable, engaging, and brisk - and that delving into the depths of the past is again quite gritty. "
- Vojtěch Varyš, Instinkt

Jussi Adler-Olsen (*1950)

He studied political science and film studies. He worked as a journalist, editor and publisher. He began his literary career with the bestsellerAlfabethuset (1997), followed by the novels And She Thanked the Gods (2003) and The Washington Decree (2006). He then began to focus on topics related to his native Denmark.

He has written a four-part crime series about Copenhagen's Department Q: The Woman in the Cage (2007; Czech Host 2011), Zabijáci (2008; Czech Host 2012), The Message in a Bottle (2009) and File no. 64 (2010, Czech edition in preparation for 2013). Thanks to this series he achieved international fame.

It is significant that when this charismatic Danish bestseller made his living as a publisher in the 1980s, he published, among other things, a dramatisation of Hašek's Švejk. A characteristic feature of his style, and certainly one of the reasons for the enormous international success of his books, is his sense of humour, insight and irony.